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Musica

Cochlaeus, Johannes, 1479-1552, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress) · 1507 · [Colonie, Johannes Landen, 1507] · 23 pictures

Musica is a 1507 music theory treatise printed in Cologne by Johannes Landen and written by Johannes Cochlaeus, a humanist scholar, for students and singers learning chant and notation. The pages mix printed staff notation and text blocks with handwritten annotations and corrections added in the margins, showing how the book was read and worked through. A designer could draw on the contrast between dense black type, the ruled five-line staves, and the loose hand-scrawled marginalia, which suggests layered structure and rhythm.

Early works to 1800 · Music theory

Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division · No known copyright restrictions · More from this library